ambassador to both israel and syria. he helped establish the james baker institute for public policy at rice university in houston. ambassador, good to see you. >> good to see you. >> so how confident are you about this truce thus far? >> so far, i think it's holding. and that's obviously a good sign. there have been minor violations. but the important thing is to build on this truce. in every crisis i think there is an opportunity. and if the truce is just to become a prolonged truce only to be broken, say, a year or two down the road and we're faced with a similar crisis that we just seen in the last 12 days, then that i do not think is a successful outcome. >> so it truce is contingent upon what? besides both sides trying to be as peaceful as possible. >> well, obviously, a sustained cease-fire. the israelis do not want arms to be smuggled in and rockets to be smuggled into gaza during the truce in order to avoid what we've just seen, the rocket shelgz in sou shellings in tel aviv and jerusalem. then on the palestinia